A lovely quilt and Paducah!!

Yes you read that correctly.

PADUCAH!  I got the news today that not one, but two of my quilts were accepted into Paducah.  I can make a big deal of this, because I did not get in last year, and was not too happy about it.  I have been seeing the happy Facebook posts for 2 days from people who got their acceptances, as I waited cautiously optimistic that mine might be in the mail too.  Now, I wasn't confident I was going to get in, so I didn't dare make plans to go to Kentucky for the show.  I'm feeling pretty bummed, but that is life.  I will be at MQX the week of April 10th, then my kids are on vacation the next week.  Going to Paducah the following week would just take mom gymnastics and $1500 to pull off.  That seems more daunting that getting into the show right now.  So, those of you that might be going, of the 402 show quilts, my quilt Intertwined and Zen Garden will be there.  Lots of happy dances :-)

On to the quilty show...

This is a client quilt.  It's a Judy Niemeyer  60" Feathered Star, made from batiks.  She did a pretty good job with the piecing.  All those Y-seams can be a bear, as I know.  Blocking the quilt should completely knock this thing into nice flatness too.  She hopes to show the quilt, so it is custom quilted.  Seriously, do I really do anything but custom quilts?? (not really - but the next one up for the weekend is a stippled job. - Yea for simple!).

 I think you can dbl-click this image to see more.

I make no qualms about not loving the Niemeyer patterns, and this one is no exception.  They are wonderful, and detailed, and for many quilters just too hard.  This one is done well.   My general dislike of the pattern stems from the fact that there just is not much space for a quilter to develop a quilting design.  I have the pale green background, and the rather busy, pieced outer border.  But the other backgrounds are relatively tiny spaces...great for microquilting and using too much thread :-)

The entire quilt is stitched in Glide (many colors) or Superior Magnifico (just the rust thread).  Oops, I almost lied.  I forgot about the peach Master Quilter that I used on the center star's background.  How the heck could I forget what a complete pain this stuff was?!  I have used the Wonderfil MasterQuilter many times before and LOVED it, but this time it sucked eggs royally.  The bobbin backlashed at least 20 times (causing about 2-3 extra hours of stopping, picking and restarting).

 I hope you can see the circles and dots I worked into the quilting design.  There are small ones and larger ones.

 This quilt has the added Tuscany wool batt to give more loft to the stitching.  Batiks have a way of being a flatter quilt because they are tighter fabrics, so the extra batting was a really good idea.  The outer pieced green border is actually stitched with turquoise thread.  I wanted it to show a little (and it barely does except for the texture).  This little 4-5" border took me about 5-6 hours to stitch!  I kept second guessing it as I was quilting, but off the frame, it comes to life.

 So, we are at another weekend.  Happily, it is now March, and there is not a snowstorm on the horizon.  We got about 60" of snow last month.  I need it to feel like spring soon.  Time for me to work through several quilts next week.  My motto for March is Motivation.  The last 3 weeks have had too many school vacation or half days, or snow days for me to get squat accomplished.  Now it's catch-up time!

Have a great weekend :-)